PP
When they force you to say the words:
A professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio will be paid $400,000 after he was disciplined four years ago for refusing to use a transgender student’s preferred pronouns.
Nicholas Meriwether, a philosophy professor at Shawnee State, was reprimanded in 2018 after he would not refer to a transgender student by her preferred pronouns. He had a warning placed in his file and was told to change the way he addresses transgender students “to avoid further corrective actions.”
So a university – a place with, one would hope, some concept of respect for truth – ordered a professor to pretend a male student was a female student by calling him “her.” Not urged, not requested, but told. It’s degrading. It’s like telling the faculty to spend the first half hour of every class reading Winnie the Pooh to the students. It’s degrading to all parties, including the university.
The warning stemmed from an incident in 2018, during one of his Meriwether’s lectures when he called a transgender student “sir” when she raised her hand. The student asked Meriwether to call her by her preferred pronouns, which he refused to do saying his “sincerely held religious beliefs prevented him from communicating messages about gender identity that he believes are false.”
It’s not a religious belief though. It’s a universal “belief,” or rather a fact. Males aren’t females; females aren’t males; we all know that; religion has nothing to do with it. Houses aren’t ice cream, eagles aren’t forks, potatoes aren’t oceans, steel isn’t paper, earthquakes aren’t tiramisu. No university should be ordering its professors (or any other staff) to lie at the behest of a warped stupid reality-denying pseudo-politics.
In a statement, Shawnee State said the settlement was an “economic decision” and that it continues to stand behind a student’s right to a discrimination-free learning environment while also allowing its faculty and staff to freely express their beliefs.
It’s not “discrimination” (in the pejorative sense Shawnee State means) to refuse to call male students “she.” It’s not comparable to the old Whites Only lunch counters and water fountains in the South.
Good. The more of these places which learn that bullying ordinary people in order to favour cult members is going to cost them a lot more money than they earn from those cult members, the better. Perhaps the accountants will persuade them to stop, even if they don’t have a conscience.
Or leading the budding philosophers in a rendition of the Cole Porter classic ‘Anything Goes.’ Porter’s lyrics are right up to date with regard to this present-day transbullshit.
The world has gone mad today / And good’s bad today, / And black’s white today, / And day’s night today, / And that gent today / You gave a cent today/ Once had several chateaux.
When folks who still can ride in jitneys/ Find out Vanderbilts and Whitneys / Lack baby clo’es, / Anything goes.
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aeQ3DmKU7A
http://www.lyricsdepot.com/cole-porter/anything-goes.html
All true, of course. But I think the Professor’s point here is that his Christian beliefs prohibit him from telling lies: ‘communicating messages … that he believes are false’.
Yes, that could be. My secular beliefs work the same way in this instance. My secular beliefs don’t always prohibit me from communicating messages I believe are false, like for instance when my secular belief that it’s bad to insult people prompts a tactful evasion…which now I mention it is also why we’re not supposed to say “that’s not a woman.” The old “be kind” routine. But personal tact is one thing, social lies on a mass scale are another.
Don’t mind me, I’m just wibbling on.
So, would the professor have lost had he not had “sincerely held religious beliefs” to point to? Would Ophelia have lost because her secular beliefs would be deemed insufficient to protect her from forced compliance with preferred pronouns?
There are religious beliefs in play, but the ones that should be the issue, and under scrutiny, are not those of the professor, but those of the student. Demanding that others address him as he desires to be addressed are not that different from an expectation that non-believers should follow the proscriptions and strictures of someone else’s faith. “Preferred pronouns” are as much of an imposition of faith as making others observe the Sabbath, refrain from eating meat on Fridays, or eating pork at all. It’s a demand not just for recognition but for participation, not to mention submission and obedience. If not participating “causes offence,” well that’s just too damn bad. The demand itself was offensive, and intrusive, whether or not those being compelled followed any religion or not.
Excellent point.
The university continues to try to mealy-mouth its way around its despicable behavior and its resounding loss in court. The opinion of the 6th district is marvelous.
https://adfmedialegalfiles.blob.core.windows.net/files/Meriwether6thCircuitOpinion.pdf
Shawnee State says it’s not worth throwing more good money after bad in pursuing this case, and the so the proper “economic decision” is to pay the settlement, but the more simple truth is that they are in the wrong and they cannot win this case. If they do this sort of thing again they will again be liable, and I hope that the Sixth District’s decision will provide precedent elsewhere.
I don’t love everything the ADF does, but I love what they did in this case. Professor Meriwether deserved to have his rights preserved. This is the kind of case the ACLU would take if the ACLU were still the ACLU of my childhood, instead of the organization it is now – one which actively fights against free speech, and in favor of censorship and forced speech.
Papito, that is a great write up from the judge; I do think he gets it. Freedom of speech applies to both professors and students. I cannot force my students (nor would I want to, since that isn’t free choice) to give up God, but I can tell them that they have to give the correct age of the earth on my tests to get points for the question.
As a science teacher, I do not feel like it is appropriate for me to suggest that humans are not sexually dimorphic, that sex is a spectrum, that people can change sex, or that people can be ‘born in the wrong body’. Treating all my students with the respect due them, and any additional respect they might earn, does not mean catering to their every fantasy.